A Reply to Rabbi Boteach

There's no cabal, but there is a segment of Hollywood's secular Jewish community that is anti-Catholic.

The "Today Show," Newsweek magazine, the Los Angeles Times and other media outlets have all reported on the Hollywood animus against "The Passion." As one Oscar-campaign veteran put it, "a lot of older Academy voters, who are largely Jewish, refuse to even see this movie." Tom O'Neil, who is one of the most prominent students of the Oscars, recently described what happened when the Mel Gibson film was being considered by the experts: "At this religious movie, there was more cussing and swearing by Oscar voters than has ever been seen in an Academy screening before." This says it all.

The point is that no one seriously disputes the fact that Hollywood is a heavily secular Jewish community. And while some may want to defend Hollywood against the charge that it is anti-Christian in general and anti-Catholic in particular, those who do so carry a heavy burden. It is not for nothing that Hollywood has been turning out one Christian-bashing film after another for the past few decades. There are books and tapes available that document the animus in detail.

Indeed, a report released on December 16 by the Parents Television Council shows that Hollywood has a real problem with religion. The study of CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, WB, UPN and Pax contained 2,344 treatments of religion constituting 2,385 hours of primetime television. L. Brent Bozell, the president of the organization, said the findings of his study "lend credibility to the idea that Hollywood accepts spirituality but shies away from endorsing, or even tolerating, organized religion." As important as anything, Bozell said that "anti-Catholic bigotry" was "rampant" on network shows. "Catholicism is in the bull's-eye of the entertainment media," he said.

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Beliefnet readers should know that while Boteach has been railing against me, I have been tagged as "a neocon plant inside the Catholic right." And do you know who did the planting? Jews.

Over the summer, in the Catholic League journal, Catalyst, I published an article that took to task a piece in the Catholic monthly, Culture Wars. It was not because the article was anti-Catholic; it was because it was anti-Semitic. Here is what we said about the person who runs the magazine, E. Michael Jones: "The Catholic League condemns Jones' anti-Semitism and repudiates his efforts to justify it in the name of Catholic theology." And because of this, Culture Wars has published two cover articles attacking me, partly because I credit Jews as helping my career.